Month: August 2017

Today I thought I’d switch gears and write about my current workout schedule, or training split if you will. I almost hesitate to call it a “training split” because that’s a term I hear a lot of fitness experts use and I obviously am by no means a serious bodybuilder. That being said, I have been focusing a lot more of my workouts on strength training lately (and less on cardio) and it has made going to the gym more enjoyable and less of a chore. When I’m at the gym now, I’m not thinking about weight loss near as much as I used to. When I am lifting weights, I am focusing on building muscle so I can be stronger and burn more fat throughout out the day. This shift in my thinking has really helped motivate me to get my workouts in on days when I would typically be tempted to skip them. Additionally, time goes by WAY faster when you’re strength training as opposed to spending 45 minutes doing mindless cardio.

Don’t get me wrong – I still do cardio. I always warm up with 5 minutes on the elliptical, and I finish every workout with 15-20 minutes of some sort of cardio. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less; but 15-20 seems to be the sweet spot for me. Ideally, this is spent doing HIIT on the stair master, but I also enjoy walking on the treadmill and doing hills on the stationary bike.

My current workout schedule that I have really been enjoying lately is a 5 day split, which I will dive into below. However since I only go to the gym 3 to 4 days a week right now (that’s what works for me), it takes me about a week and a half to get through the entire split. I wrote this schedule by combining ideas from my own past workout routines as well as ideas from current fitness gurus I follow on social media. Every time I complete a workout I am seriously sore for days…so basically I am pretty much sore all the time, lol. While I am working out, I record how many sets and reps I do of each exercise on my phone as well as much weight I use. This is a great way for me to track my progress and is a reference for me to refer back to when planning future workouts.

As a reminder, the following routine is what has been working for me and is what I personally have been liking. Everyone is different, and I know a lot of people dislike strength training and prefer cardio. If there is one thing I have learned over my many years of experience with weight loss, it’s that the right kind of exercise is exercise that you will STICK WITH, so find what you like and do it!

Here is my current training split!

Day 1: Biceps and shoulders

Single lateral raises 3×12

Barbell curls 3×12

Overhead press (dumbbell) 3×12

Alternating bicep curls 3×12

Alternating front raises 3×12

Cable curls 3×12

Day 2: Legs (glutes and hamstrings focus)

Seated leg curls 3×15

Single leg deadlifts 3×10 each leg

Sumo squats 3×8

Walking lunges 3×10 each leg

Glute kickbacks 3×10 each leg

Stiff legged deadlifts (Romanian deadlifts) 3×12

Day 3: Back and abs

Lat pulldowns 4×12

Standing close grip cable pulls 3×15

Dumbbell rows 3×10

Stiff arm lat push downs 3×12

Ab machine one 3×15

Ab machine two 3×15

(lol I know my ab workout needs some improvement, but right now I just use two of the ab machines at the gym which I call “ab machine one” and “ab machine two,” ha!)

Day 4: Chest and triceps

Chest press machine 3×15

Tricep pressdown (rope) 3×15

Smith machine bench press 3×12

Tricep machine 3×15

Flies 3×10

Overhead tricep extensions 3×15

Day 5: Legs (quads and calves focus)

Seated calf press 4×20

Single leg extension 3×12 each leg

Leg press 4×12

Adductor machine 3×15

Squats (Smith machine) 3×8

Standing calf raises 4×15

Hope everyone is having a great week, and thanks for stopping by the blog!

My favorite part about Weight Watchers is that I literally eat WHATEVER I WANT. There are no foods or food groups that are off limits, which is great for me because to be honest, I stray far from a lot of the traditional “diet foods.” I eat a lot of carbs, a lot of healthy fat, and an adequate amount of protein – but not very much meat. While I am not a vegetarian, I tend to lean more towards a plant based diet when I am at home for no reason other than I just don’t really like cooking meat and I don’t love the taste of a lot of it. That being said, one of my long-term goals that I strive towards every day is to eat more fruits and vegetables. I love the sheer volume of these foods that you can eat for such a small amount of calories. Additionally, they fill you up, keep you satisfied and make you feel GOOD. Best of all, fruits and veggies are ZERO smart points so you can eat an unlimited amount of them on WW.

Probably the only advantage about having a lot of weight to lose is that I get a decent amount of smart points to work with. I know a lot of people following the WW plan only get 30 sp per day so I am enjoying the 48 points I get while I can! For those who aren’t familiar with WW, your daily points allotment is calculated by a formula based off of gender, height, weight and activity level – so as you lose weight your points go down. I started at 51 points and am down to 48 after losing 30 pounds, so it’s probably safe to guesstimate that they go down by about 1 point for every 10 pounds you lose, with a minimum daily total of 30. The smart points value of food is calculated based on the calories, saturated fat, sugar and protein content of the food.

My work schedule doesn’t allow for a lot of snacking throughout the day, so I tend to divide my points up as follows: 13-15 for breakfast (depending on if I have coffee), 12-15 for lunch, and 18-22 for dinner and any snacks or unplanned food/drinks I may have throughout the day.

Breakfast is pretty much the exact same thing every single day: two pieces of avocado toast with goat cheese for a total of 13 sp. I use a locally made multi-grain flax bread from a place called Bay Bread (7 sp for 2 slices), one small avocado, (5 sp) and a couple tablespoons of crumbled goat cheese (1 sp).

Lunch has to be something that can be easily packed and taken to work, and my current trend has been to pack a bit of a smorgasbord of food. I love eating some sort of combination of hard boiled eggs (4 sp for 2 eggs), string cheese (1-3 sp depending on the brand), fruit, granola bars (4-8 sp), nuts (6 sp), yogurt (2-4 sp), crackers (3 sp), and hummus (2-3 sp) with veggies. I also enjoy an Amys frozen meal (13-15 sp) on occasion (once a week or so) that I will pack with fruit.

When I am feeling ambitious I will actually cook something to eat throughout the week for lunches, such a veggie pizza (10 sp per slice) or some sort of pasta (10-13 sp). I’ll pack these up with fruit, string cheese and/or a couple of hard boiled eggs.

As I mentioned previously, I don’t really do a ton of snacking but when I do I try to eat fruit, hard boiled eggs, a protein bar, nuts, etc. Below you can see a picture of my “snack basket” which has a lot of my favorite bars that range from 4 to 8 sp each. I also LOVE to make huge fruit smoothies with frozen fruit, a ton of fresh spinach, and 1/2 cup of orange juice. My favorite fruit combos for smoothies are banana/pear/pineapple and banana/blueberry/grape. Technically, you are supposed to count the points from fruits and veggies when they are blended into drinks but I’ll be honest – I don’t count them. Since the only ingredient I actually track is the orange juice, that makes these delicious smoothies a grand total of 3 sp.

For dinner, my favorite thing to make lately is homemade vegetarian sushi. OMG, it is so good. I use 1/2 cup of sushi rice (9 sp) and 2 sheets of nori to make 2 rolls. If you use all veggies for the filling you could keep these rolls as low as 9 sp for 2 rolls, but I love to include avocado (2 sp) and cream cheese (4 sp) in mine as well. Sweet potato (3 sp) is another favorite of mine to include, along with shredded carrot, cucumber, lettuce, and anything else I feel like throwing in. The rolls below are the ones I made last night and they were SO GOOD. They had avocado, sweet potato, cream cheese and carrot, and of course some spicy mayo on the side.

I also try to make fish once every couple weeks. My current favorite is this wild-caught Alaskan salmon I purchase frozen in individual 5 oz packages from a place called Lucky’s Market. I typically like to eat it with potatoes and veggies. The plate below is 14 smart points – 4 sp for the salmon, 6 sp for the potatoes (8 ounces) and 4 sp for the tablespoon of olive oil I used to prepare the food.

Other things I like to make for dinner include tacos with ground turkey, soup, breakfast for dinner (usually eggs, potatoes and fruit), pasta with veggies, and vegetarian burrito bowls.

I hope you enjoyed this snapshot of the foods I have been enjoying lately since I started Weight Watchers! Please let me know any other food-related posts you’d like to see. I am planning on doing some full day of eating posts (What I Eat In A Day) as well as some restaurant focused food posts, with tips on calculating points when you are eating out.

Good morning! I’m here with my bi-annual, sporadic unplanned blog post with an update on my life. Hopefully we can make these more frequent than twice a year, but we shall see.

Today we’re going to focus on a weight loss update! For those who don’t know me in real life or follow me on Instagram (username is @kristaberg27 – add me!!) then you might not know that I am now doing Weight Watchers. I started on May 12th and have been going strong ever since. For those who are not familiar with the WW program, members use a points system to track all of their food and can expect to lose 1-2 lbs per week. The current system utilizes Smart Points, which are calculated based on a food’s calories, saturated fat, sugar and protein. Every person is allotted a specific number of daily smart points, and this number is based on gender, height, weight and activity level. Additionally, members receive 42 “weekly points” that are essentially extra points that may optionally be used on whatever you would like (cheat meals, etc.).

The plan may sound kind of complicated to follow, but it is actually very simple. There is an app for your phone that has a database full of points values for almost every food you can imagine. There is also a barcode scanner which will scan products and automatically calculate points, and there is an option to add your own foods and recipes. Something else I love about the app is the Connect feature. Connect is basically like a Facebook page for Weight Watchers. Members post updates, pictures, before & afters, and pretty much anything you want and receive likes and words of encouragement from other members. This is especially helpful for people like me who have an online-only membership (the other option is to have a standard membership which includes access to weekly in-person meetings in your area).

I am more than happy to explain the WW process in more detail, and am thinking about starting to post some What I Eat In A Day blogs. If anyone is interested in any of these please let me know!

Oh my gosh, I almost forgot to share the most important part… how much weight I’ve lost!

The picture on the left was taken in May and the one the right was taken this past Sunday. There is a 25 pound difference in the two photos 🙂 Altogether I am down about 28 pounds since beginning the program and I am very happy with these results!

I feel like I have so much more to say about WW and my weight loss journey thus far. Those who have been following me for a while know that this is not my first go-round and my thought process and feelings on the process have honestly been so much different this time around. I will have to elaborate in another blog post because I think that a lot of people could relate to what I’m going through and have been thinking about.

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Thanks so much for reading! Please let me know any questions that you may have or content that you would like to see on this blog. I’d really appreciate it 🙂

Welcome

Hi, I’m Krista! I’m a 20-something northern Michigan native living in Traverse City. Follow along on my journey through Weight Watchers and through life!